Art of Problem Solving
Aug. 22nd, 2022 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnI have threatened for years now to rant about how excellent Art of Problem Solving (AoPS) is, and I guess now is the time, because E has just finished her first math class with them (Introduction to Counting and Probability), which she took over the summer. (She had previously taken their two python classes and I'd been super impressed, but I wasn't sure how representative those were.) And because her school has run out of math classes for her, she will be taking her math classes with them for... at least the next two years, and hopefully beyond that. I now kind of wish that she'd taken all her math classes ever with them (though for E in particular I greatly prioritized her socializing with other kids in person, and she's adored the math teacher she had for the last two years), and if I can possibly do so I will make this happen with A.
AoPS was started by math contest geeks, and provides math curriculum and online math classes from Prealgebra through Group Theory, which go more deeply into the curriculum and have more challenging problems than your run-of-the-mill math class, and have as a core philosophy trying to teach problem-solving skills in general rather than just how to do specific problems. (Beast Academy is their curriculum for the lower grades, which A. is enrolled in at the second/third grade level and which I've talked about before.)
It's geared towards strong math students and also has a decided bent towards contest prep, although you don't have to be into math contests to take or to appreciate the classes. (The site does have, in addition to more "conventional" math classes, contest prep classes for Mathcounts as well as prep for the AMC/AIME/Olympiad route; I have no experience with any of those classes at this point.) It's really amazingly great for kids (like E) who need to be mathematically challenged and are having a hard time getting that from conventional school (I LOVE that she sometimes has difficulty solving AoPS problems immediately, which is not a use case that she has gotten at school very often), but also it's just a really strong and in-depth math curriculum that I'm kind of in awe of and wish I could have gotten when I was her age. I would honestly recommend it for any strong math student who would like to go more in-depth into topics, with the caveat the child would have to work rather harder in these classes than in most math classes at a conventional school.
The classes that E has done with them are text-based. There is no video component. There is no Zoom. (They do now have some classes that have a video component, but these were the first and are still the ones they are known for.) There is a synchronous component, where everyone basically can type into the same window, and the instructor presents a lecture in text, liberally peppered with questions that the students can answer. The students are moderated, so when the instructor asks questions, their answers go through teaching assistants before being released to the whole class (and kids can ask questions themselves privately).
I was really skeptical about this the first time E took a class with them. But it turns out we all LOVE this format. It means we don't have to worry about finding a quiet room for her, or tell her brother that he has to be quiet while she's in class. It means that she doesn't have to worry about being present in the zoom or looking at the teacher or something (which is something we all hate about zoom). It means that if she needs to take a five-minute break for a snack, she can do that without being disruptive, and she can easily rejoin because the transcript is right there in front of her. (I assume it also makes it very easy for the instructor -- I imagine quite a lot is preprogrammed in.) It means that if there's a part she needs to go over again, the transcript is right there -- or if there's a part that she knows and doesn't really need to pay a lot of attention to, she can kid around with her brother while watching to see whether something more challenging comes up. The only drawback is that it means that she has no personal connection to any of the other kids taking the class. (At least at this point, she doesn't seem to think that virtually interacting is really at all interesting on a personal level.)
These classes changed the way I thought about homework. My experience with homework in elementary school and half of high school was that it was a thing that (by and large) teachers made you do for essentially no reason but which was easy enough, so I would just do it in whatever class was right after the class the homework was assigned in (because it wasn't like I was paying attention to the class, usually) and that would be that. (At second high school, I had teachers who understood the function of homework pedagogically, but I am pretty sure I didn't understand it at the time -- it was more challenging and I enjoyed it more, and couldn't get away with doing it in class anymore, but that was as much as I thought about it.) And when E started going through school, she had just awful homework at her first school that annoyed her a lot (stuff she'd known how to do for years), and so I was definitely on the "homework is bad!" bandwagon.
I still think that there are at least some kids/family situations (including both of mine) for whom school-assigned homework makes very little sense in the early elementary years. But at E's age (upper elementary/middle) it can be used a tool for skill-learning. AoPS is very clear on their philosophy that problem sets are how mathematics and technical skills are learned and practiced and automaticity is gained, and AoPS emphasizes homework and de-emphasizes class -- to the extent that for a given course, you could skip all the classes and do all the problem sets and that would be a perfectly acceptable way of completing the course if you were able to learn the material on your own. (I think class participation counts for maybe 5%?) They don't particularly recommend that for most kids, but they also don't see a problem with it if it's a good way for you to learn. And the problems are great; a lot of them do come from math competitions, so are not necessarily as straightforward as what you'd find in a conventional course. They specifically say that they don't expect students to be able to do all of the problems, and certainly not all of them easily/at first glance -- and if you can do all the problems easily, maybe you should be taking a harder class. They want you to have the opportunity to sit with a hard problem for a while, maybe taking a while to make progress, maybe asking for help. And I certainly wish I'd had more experience with this kind of thing before going for a Ph.D., which is all about sitting with hard problems and making incremental progress, and maybe asking for help :P
They also have just thought out a lot of little but important things. For example, every class has "Are you ready?" and "Do you need this?" links, the former of which goes to a pre-test and the latter of which goes to a post-test, which the student can take and reassure themself (or often more importantly, their parent, haha) that (in the former case) they know the prereqs they need to know to take the class, or that (in the latter case) they know all the material in the class and taking it would just be review, and perhaps they should consider taking the class the next step up instead. (But it's always left up to the kid/parents; they don't care if you take a class that's "rated" as too hard for you or too easy for you, which I think is great.) This is so sensible that I don't know why all classes, especially online classes, don't do this! It is so much more of a better system than what I've always had to do for everything else, which is flat-out guess based only on the course description. (Hi there, trying to pick freshman math class!) They also have a publicly available syllabus so you can check and see what the class covers week-by-week, which is also super useful! and would be so nice if other places did this!
It's all just very well set up, much better set up than my rambly discussion of its merits, haha. Everything has clearly been thought out in such a way to prioritize learning. One of the things I've been really impressed by is the class forums -- each class has a message board where the kids can post questions they have about problems, ask for help, etc. The genius is that the kids are encouraged to post (in E's class there is a "discussion question" every other week for which they're required to post) and encouraged to ask questions publicly (and answer other kids' questions publicly, for that matter, although my perception has been that it's more likely for one of the teaching assistants to answer than for another kid to answer). (There are "office hours" for a semi-private venue when necessary, and you can also ask questions completely privately during class hours.) Asking questions has been something I've been encouraging E to do -- of course when she has difficulty she'd much rather ask D for help (she hates asking me for help in general, and I think we're now at the point where I'm not entirely sure I could always help her with math!), but as a life skill it's pretty important to be able to ask people for help who aren't your parents, and I'm impressed at how much AoPS encourages and facilitates that. (Our other online class experience, with CTY, has not been set up that way at all. I'm too lazy to tell you how terrible CTY was, but although the content of her class was okay, the interface/logistics/presentation of the class was all just annoying and awful. E has also taken a couple of classes from Outschool, but those have more been enrichment activities than actual classes.)
I'm also impressed by their commitment to teaching kids how to communicate mathematically in terms of doing things like encouraging writing proofs. This is something they're committed to -- every other week, in E's class, they have had a writing problem, which is graded both on technical merit and on style. This has been far and away the most frustrating part of the class for E. She has worked on math communication for years at school, but even so, pretty much every writing problem in this class she has said, "I know what the answer is, but I don't know how to write down how I got it!" Because she's worked on it at school, she does know quite a lot, actually, about how to articulate how she got it. Part of the issue is that a lot of her schoolwork on this has been oral, so she can speak about it but hasn't practiced writing as much (but which has a simple solution -- we ask her to talk to us about her answer and she can usually articulate it that way.) -- and part of the issue is sometimes that she's read enough math writing at this point that she can tell that the way she's writing it isn't quite right but she doesn't know how to say it the "proper" math way. But she's getting practice! They're even giving them some elementary LaTeX! (I should note here that I do think that a weakness of the Beast Academy curriculum for the earlier years is that they don't emphasize mathematical communication, which as I've said her school has actually been really good about.)
AoPS was started by math contest geeks, and provides math curriculum and online math classes from Prealgebra through Group Theory, which go more deeply into the curriculum and have more challenging problems than your run-of-the-mill math class, and have as a core philosophy trying to teach problem-solving skills in general rather than just how to do specific problems. (Beast Academy is their curriculum for the lower grades, which A. is enrolled in at the second/third grade level and which I've talked about before.)
It's geared towards strong math students and also has a decided bent towards contest prep, although you don't have to be into math contests to take or to appreciate the classes. (The site does have, in addition to more "conventional" math classes, contest prep classes for Mathcounts as well as prep for the AMC/AIME/Olympiad route; I have no experience with any of those classes at this point.) It's really amazingly great for kids (like E) who need to be mathematically challenged and are having a hard time getting that from conventional school (I LOVE that she sometimes has difficulty solving AoPS problems immediately, which is not a use case that she has gotten at school very often), but also it's just a really strong and in-depth math curriculum that I'm kind of in awe of and wish I could have gotten when I was her age. I would honestly recommend it for any strong math student who would like to go more in-depth into topics, with the caveat the child would have to work rather harder in these classes than in most math classes at a conventional school.
The classes that E has done with them are text-based. There is no video component. There is no Zoom. (They do now have some classes that have a video component, but these were the first and are still the ones they are known for.) There is a synchronous component, where everyone basically can type into the same window, and the instructor presents a lecture in text, liberally peppered with questions that the students can answer. The students are moderated, so when the instructor asks questions, their answers go through teaching assistants before being released to the whole class (and kids can ask questions themselves privately).
I was really skeptical about this the first time E took a class with them. But it turns out we all LOVE this format. It means we don't have to worry about finding a quiet room for her, or tell her brother that he has to be quiet while she's in class. It means that she doesn't have to worry about being present in the zoom or looking at the teacher or something (which is something we all hate about zoom). It means that if she needs to take a five-minute break for a snack, she can do that without being disruptive, and she can easily rejoin because the transcript is right there in front of her. (I assume it also makes it very easy for the instructor -- I imagine quite a lot is preprogrammed in.) It means that if there's a part she needs to go over again, the transcript is right there -- or if there's a part that she knows and doesn't really need to pay a lot of attention to, she can kid around with her brother while watching to see whether something more challenging comes up. The only drawback is that it means that she has no personal connection to any of the other kids taking the class. (At least at this point, she doesn't seem to think that virtually interacting is really at all interesting on a personal level.)
These classes changed the way I thought about homework. My experience with homework in elementary school and half of high school was that it was a thing that (by and large) teachers made you do for essentially no reason but which was easy enough, so I would just do it in whatever class was right after the class the homework was assigned in (because it wasn't like I was paying attention to the class, usually) and that would be that. (At second high school, I had teachers who understood the function of homework pedagogically, but I am pretty sure I didn't understand it at the time -- it was more challenging and I enjoyed it more, and couldn't get away with doing it in class anymore, but that was as much as I thought about it.) And when E started going through school, she had just awful homework at her first school that annoyed her a lot (stuff she'd known how to do for years), and so I was definitely on the "homework is bad!" bandwagon.
I still think that there are at least some kids/family situations (including both of mine) for whom school-assigned homework makes very little sense in the early elementary years. But at E's age (upper elementary/middle) it can be used a tool for skill-learning. AoPS is very clear on their philosophy that problem sets are how mathematics and technical skills are learned and practiced and automaticity is gained, and AoPS emphasizes homework and de-emphasizes class -- to the extent that for a given course, you could skip all the classes and do all the problem sets and that would be a perfectly acceptable way of completing the course if you were able to learn the material on your own. (I think class participation counts for maybe 5%?) They don't particularly recommend that for most kids, but they also don't see a problem with it if it's a good way for you to learn. And the problems are great; a lot of them do come from math competitions, so are not necessarily as straightforward as what you'd find in a conventional course. They specifically say that they don't expect students to be able to do all of the problems, and certainly not all of them easily/at first glance -- and if you can do all the problems easily, maybe you should be taking a harder class. They want you to have the opportunity to sit with a hard problem for a while, maybe taking a while to make progress, maybe asking for help. And I certainly wish I'd had more experience with this kind of thing before going for a Ph.D., which is all about sitting with hard problems and making incremental progress, and maybe asking for help :P
They also have just thought out a lot of little but important things. For example, every class has "Are you ready?" and "Do you need this?" links, the former of which goes to a pre-test and the latter of which goes to a post-test, which the student can take and reassure themself (or often more importantly, their parent, haha) that (in the former case) they know the prereqs they need to know to take the class, or that (in the latter case) they know all the material in the class and taking it would just be review, and perhaps they should consider taking the class the next step up instead. (But it's always left up to the kid/parents; they don't care if you take a class that's "rated" as too hard for you or too easy for you, which I think is great.) This is so sensible that I don't know why all classes, especially online classes, don't do this! It is so much more of a better system than what I've always had to do for everything else, which is flat-out guess based only on the course description. (Hi there, trying to pick freshman math class!) They also have a publicly available syllabus so you can check and see what the class covers week-by-week, which is also super useful! and would be so nice if other places did this!
It's all just very well set up, much better set up than my rambly discussion of its merits, haha. Everything has clearly been thought out in such a way to prioritize learning. One of the things I've been really impressed by is the class forums -- each class has a message board where the kids can post questions they have about problems, ask for help, etc. The genius is that the kids are encouraged to post (in E's class there is a "discussion question" every other week for which they're required to post) and encouraged to ask questions publicly (and answer other kids' questions publicly, for that matter, although my perception has been that it's more likely for one of the teaching assistants to answer than for another kid to answer). (There are "office hours" for a semi-private venue when necessary, and you can also ask questions completely privately during class hours.) Asking questions has been something I've been encouraging E to do -- of course when she has difficulty she'd much rather ask D for help (she hates asking me for help in general, and I think we're now at the point where I'm not entirely sure I could always help her with math!), but as a life skill it's pretty important to be able to ask people for help who aren't your parents, and I'm impressed at how much AoPS encourages and facilitates that. (Our other online class experience, with CTY, has not been set up that way at all. I'm too lazy to tell you how terrible CTY was, but although the content of her class was okay, the interface/logistics/presentation of the class was all just annoying and awful. E has also taken a couple of classes from Outschool, but those have more been enrichment activities than actual classes.)
I'm also impressed by their commitment to teaching kids how to communicate mathematically in terms of doing things like encouraging writing proofs. This is something they're committed to -- every other week, in E's class, they have had a writing problem, which is graded both on technical merit and on style. This has been far and away the most frustrating part of the class for E. She has worked on math communication for years at school, but even so, pretty much every writing problem in this class she has said, "I know what the answer is, but I don't know how to write down how I got it!" Because she's worked on it at school, she does know quite a lot, actually, about how to articulate how she got it. Part of the issue is that a lot of her schoolwork on this has been oral, so she can speak about it but hasn't practiced writing as much (but which has a simple solution -- we ask her to talk to us about her answer and she can usually articulate it that way.) -- and part of the issue is sometimes that she's read enough math writing at this point that she can tell that the way she's writing it isn't quite right but she doesn't know how to say it the "proper" math way. But she's getting practice! They're even giving them some elementary LaTeX! (I should note here that I do think that a weakness of the Beast Academy curriculum for the earlier years is that they don't emphasize mathematical communication, which as I've said her school has actually been really good about.)
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Date: 2022-08-25 11:42 pm (UTC)But yay! I'm glad for E.
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Date: 2022-08-26 05:18 am (UTC)Congrats and good luck with moving!
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Date: 2022-08-27 03:42 pm (UTC)Yeah, her biggest problems seem to all revolve around emotional regulation. And I'm kind of with her on that, in the sense that some of the stressors she's dealing with are ones I think are invisible to everyone except her, because everyone around her has the coping skills to deal with those stressors and she doesn't...and even though I did when I was her age, looking back I feel those stressors were still unnecessary and coping with them came with an invisible cost.
Currently reading another pop psych book--one that, as usual, should have been an essay, and I don't find it especially amazing, but I'm adding it to my list of mandatory skimming for teachers when I take over the world. ;)
On a different note, do you have to be a registered K-12 student to do AoPS? My stepdaughter is in her late 20s, trying to do community college online, math-phobic, and has paralyzing anxiety. And she has to take algebra at some point. I'm wondering if AoPS would help her get some of the concepts down before she has to do them in a class for college credit. Would you recommend it for her use case?
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Date: 2022-08-27 05:49 pm (UTC)Well -- it's true that emotional regulation is her biggest problem, but I think also that some of the stressors she's dealing with are not actually nearly as large stressors for at least some other people and don't have the visible or invisible costs for them that they do for her, so it's hard for them to understand. (I actually have similar stressors to her, which I'll get to in a moment, but I think they bother her more than they do me, even without the emotional regulation component.) Like, A. actually told me the other day that he dislikes doing workbooks (sometimes we have him do workbooks instead of Beast Academy Online) because they don't have instant feedback. And, say, take the sort of video game where you can "die," which is another sort of instant negative feedback:
-E WILL NOT play those kinds of games. WILL NOT.
-A and D LOVE playing those kinds of games and would play them all day if they could
-I would always prefer to watch someone else playing those games, and would/will sometimes play them myself, but would massively stress out and feel physically crummy afterwards (like, clearly an elevated stress response, heart rate up and shaking and everything)
(I thought of video games because I've seen them recommended as a way that kids can experience failure in a way that has no real-world consequences. But it just doesn't work for E, and I understand that, because I am not unlike her and it doesn't work for me either -- but I also can see how it might work for other kids.)
But yeah, about invisibility of the stressors -- they aren't entirely invisible to me (maybe... obscured?) because I do get it to a certain extent, which is good because I can suggest the kinds of workarounds that help me. (e.g., for math, lots of different ways of checking your answer; for non-math, sometimes you just put in the answer, close the computer before you know if it's wrong or not, and come back later when you've settled your mind more -- this one I got from fic beta! (When I first started writing fic and got beta comments back, I'd have to not look at the beta comments for literally days while I steeled my mind to deal with what it perceived as an onslaught of criticism.)) On the other hand, the stressors seem basically entirely invisible to D, so we had to have a Talk about how saying things that come across as "you shouldn't feel this way" aren't at all helpful either emotionally or practically! (This is another thing -- it's probably not great to say these kinds of things to A., but it's probably not that bad either because he'd just shrug and be like "eh, I do feel this way, so whatever." E... ALREADY makes way too many judgments about herself with very little provocation!)
On a different note, do you have to be a registered K-12 student to do AoPS?
No! Another GREAT thing about these classes and being text-based!
My stepdaughter is in her late 20s, trying to do community college online, math-phobic, and has paralyzing anxiety. And she has to take algebra at some point. I'm wondering if AoPS would help her get some of the concepts down before she has to do them in a class for college credit. Would you recommend it for her use case?
Oof. My gut feeling is... no. The use case for AoPS Algebra is for strong middle school math students who have a strong foundation in elementary math. I would absolutely NOT AT ALL recommend it to a math-phobic middle school student. The only reason I'm hesitating is that it is possible it might be able to be a bridge for a college class... but I'm still thinking that there should be better alternatives for a person who isn't strong in math. I don't know what those are. I might look around a bit, this is relevant to my interests :)
What I have found though is that in my experience, math phobia usually stems from having had poor math instruction way before algebra. I might actually recommend her playing around with Beast Academy, say level 4 or so (especially if the cutesy idea of graphic novel monsters is a turn-on rather than a turn-off). For instance, how are her fractions? (I have found that a lot of kids aren't solid on fractions, and then when they get to algebra it is just a mess.) It's $15/month for online, which gives access to an online version of the graphic novels, videos, and problems -- so it's pretty easy to give it a try and then cancel if it's not working for her.
I think another problem here is, isn't she ADHD? Which means that it's probably a massively uphill battle to have her do math as she doesn't like it and it isn't directly something she HAS to do. (I would fight that battle if it were my kid, possibly with the help of an outside tutor -- my niece really loves hers and it seems to be working quite well -- but understand that's not everyone's battle.) On the other hand, maybe if she likes the graphic novels she might pick up things from them, idk.
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Date: 2022-08-28 12:09 am (UTC)I think we must be using terminology differently. Which might help explain how every time we have this conversation, I get the feeling we're talking past each other. (The other part being that I'm saying about 1% of what I'm thinking, because of time constraints--this would require a whole essay, if not a book.) To me, emotional regulation is the cognitive skill by which you regulate how much something bothers you. It's a scale from "doesn't bother you" to "bothers you a little" to "bothers you much more" to "bothers you so much that you can't cope with it."
Emotional regulation isn't just having a huge emotion and suppressing your outward reaction to it; the most effective emotional regulation is not having the negative emotion in the first place, or failing that, having it be only a blip on your radar.
some of the stressors she's dealing with are not actually nearly as large stressors for at least some other people
Which is why this is basically restating what I meant.
(I also used the word "some" for a reason; what I said doesn't apply to every example.)
The only reason I'm hesitating is that it is possible it might be able to be a bridge for a college class.
Yeah, I figured there has to be some middle ground between "avoiding math" and "signing up for algebra for credit," especially with the costs of tuition. She was planning to sign up for algebra this semester, which will also be her first semester taking two classes at once, which will also be when we're moving.
When her mother told me this, I went, "Mmmmmm." And explained why I thought she should take one step at a time. Her mother has since informed me that she's agreed to do literature and media studies for her first 2-class semester, which we both agree is a much better idea. (If you think I'm being overly controlling, she once took one class, did very well, took years to recover from the trauma of being praised by her teacher, and was unable to take any more classes for something like the last 6 years as a result. She has recently started trying to take classes again.)
I might actually recommend her playing around with Beast Academy
I'll pass the suggestion on, thanks! Graphic novels might be her thing?
For instance, how are her fractions?
No idea, we don't talk. All non-routine communication flows through her mother/my wife. We are roommates.
At one point recently, I even toyed with the idea of quantifying how often we talk; I really think we've gone several months at a time without the need for even routine communication!
I think another problem here is, isn't she ADHD?
Yep, and that doesn't help, but I think the paralyzing anxiety is the even bigger problem. See also, the child who was traumatized by spontaneous applause when she sang a song at a family gathering.
Lol, which reminds me that the pop psych book I'm reading is Punished by Rewards: The Problem with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, Aces, Praises, and Other Bribes, a rec from the askamanager comments section! My stepdaughter's a perfect example of someone having an extreme emotional reaction to something (praise) that most people have a less intense negative reaction to, because of their superior emotional regulation (but the author makes a convincing case that even people who seek out praise for the positive effects are experiencing an invisible stressor and paying invisible costs).
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Date: 2022-09-03 05:06 pm (UTC)To me, emotional regulation is the cognitive skill by which you regulate how much something bothers you. It's a scale from "doesn't bother you" to "bothers you a little" to "bothers you much more" to "bothers you so much that you can't cope with it."
This is not quite the way I think about it. To me, how much something bothers you is made up of three parts: a) how much it "a priori" bothers you, and b) how much, as you say, you can regulate how much it bothers you, and c) (what i mostly think of in terms of "emotional regulation") how well you are able to control your emotional reaction to something bothering you, ideally enough that you can apply coping mechanisms -- which can have a strong effect on (b).)
For example... I dislike picking up the phone and calling someone. I just don't really like it and will not call if email or text is a reasonable solution (with a few exceptions like calling my best friend, but even that is probably not an exception because we started out with email and learned after some trial and error that scheduled phone calls are a much better solution than email for our purposes). But there are lots of things for which email or text isn't a great solution, so I have learned to regulate this in your sense so that I don't have much of a stress response (which I did as, say, an adolescent), and I also have learned to control that dislike (emotional regulation as I usually talk about it) so that (unless I'm really tired or cranky) I will in fact actually pick up the phone and call someone when I need to (and as part of that i have coping mechanisms, like having scripts for routine calls, scheduling a specific time for it, etc.) -- which of course also plays into not having as extreme a reaction in (b).
But I also consider my base level of disliking picking up the phone as not a lack of emotional regulation. Consider my boss, who loves calling people! Like, to the extent that when he is on business trips by himself he will call us back in the home office because he wants someone to talk to. I mean, we all think he is weird! :) But I don't think the fact that picking up the phone does bother me to a certain extent and doesn't bother him means he has superior emotional regulation. (Or, maybe he does! But I don't think this is an example of it.) He just... is an extrovert who really likes picking up the phone and calling people.
When I talk about E hating instant feedback and it not (all) being an emotional regulation problem, I mean that, in addition to her undeniable emotional regulation problems in both our senses, I believe she has a much much higher level of (say) instant/physical feedback a priori bothering her than most people do. I think I may hvae used this example before... think about a magician who does the trick with a ball under a cup, who switches them out and then asks a kid which cup the ball is under. (There is obviously no penalty or reward for getting it right or wrong.) The kid is usually delighted to pick a cup. The kid is wrong. When I watch kids do this, the kid is then usually delighted and wants to guess again, or have the magician do the trick again.
E would not want to pick a cup at all. Now, she does have some emotional regulation in your sense, in that at age 12 she probably would pick a cup if pressed and without making an extremely loud fuss, whereas when she was a preschooler she absolutely would not and you'd get a crying screaming tantrum to boot. But the fact that she still would really rather not, I think, is not because all the neurotypical (or ADHD-with-no-other-diagnoses) preschoolers I've seen who love this trick have superior emotional regulation than her 12-year-old self. I think it's because it actually does not bother them.
Some of this, I expect, is that the spectrum-ish quality of "Does Not Like Unexpected Things" manifests in her in this way. (She doesn't seem to be out-of-the-ordinary bothered by other unexpected things, such as schedules changing, which is often a big one for spectrum kids.) But also some of this I think may be social brain issues intersecting with the emotional brain issues -- she appears to a priori code any kind of question (even if it's asking for an opinion or a guess) as "there is a right or wrong answer, and if I don't get the right answer I am a bad person," and external feedback plays right into that loop (whereas internal feedback doesn't as much).
This is as opposed to most typical kids at the advent of language, who have the social acumen necessary to understand that when they're asked "do you prefer the red pitcher or the blue pitcher?" it's not about a right or wrong answer, and also that in the absence of external rewards or punishments, there isn't an intrisnic reason why getting something "wrong" is bad (*), and it certainly doesn't mean anything about one as a person. (The question about the pitcher was an actual question that prompted a severe meltdown she had in preschool which left her teacher at the time -- who clearly had no experience with spectrum kids -- very confused.) She now has the intellectual capacity to understand this, and can also emotionally regulate by your definition better, but we've also had to talk about explicit social ideas like "when someone asks you what your favorite food is, you don't have to optimize over all foods ever and worry that maybe you didn't actually say the food that was really your absolute favorite! These kinds of questions are more to foster social connections, so all you have to do is say something that you like and you're fine." (She again has mostly got over that particular one, but it cropped up a lot in the third/fourth-grade years.) I'm trying some, as you can see, to unpick the coding of "there is always a right or wrong answer" (this is a big problem with language arts and will be even bigger as she gets older) and obviously we've worked a lot on "if I don't get the right answer I am a bad person," but gosh it's baked in pretty well. Actually I'm realizing through this discussion that I should probably do some more unpicking of it at this point, so thank you for talking through this stuff with me :)
(*) Many parents I know are actually starting to add external rewards or punishments because the kids' school and Beast Academy and a lot of progressive pedagogical systems don't really make any kind of value judgments or add any rewards (AS OPPOSED TO PRODIGY, GRR) (okay, sorry, will stop now) to a kid getting the right answer or not (which I fully agree with as a general pedagogical thing) but with the consequence that their kids are turning out extremely nonchalant about getting things wrong! (And yes, I know, Kohn wouldn't agree with the external rewards thing, but this is just to bolster my point that in the absence of those external things, it just isn't an issue for most kids -- but it emphatically is for E.)
When her mother told me this, I went, "Mmmmmm." And explained why I thought she should take one step at a time. Her mother has since informed me that she's agreed to do literature and media studies for her first 2-class semester, which we both agree is a much better idea. (If you think I'm being overly controlling, she once took one class, did very well, took years to recover from the trauma of being praised by her teacher, and was unable to take any more classes for something like the last 6 years as a result. She has recently started trying to take classes again.)
I mean, you are replying to a comment where I was like, "if it were my kid I'd hire a tutor!" so, uh, you're worrying about the wrong person thinking you might be overly controlling :P But also, like... it doesn't seem to me that you were trying to control it? At least from this rendition, it sounds like you were just "this sounds like a terrible idea and let me tell you why." Which, I don't know exactly how this went down and what kind of tone was being used etc. but I could see it coming across as judgmental or not, depending on the wording and tone. (I react badly to judgmental things from a family member, due to intense personal history with same, but with friends it's usually fine. My college partner-in-crime whom I sometimes talk about, B., is a highly judgmental person, and he was/is an awesome tech partner and friend! And I was very clear that I would never ever even consider dating him. He went on to marry my best friend and they are an awesome couple -- it's definitely a me problem :) )
(but the author makes a convincing case that even people who seek out praise for the positive effects are experiencing an invisible stressor and paying invisible costs).
Huh. I feel like I've bounced off Alfie Kohn in the past but I might take a look at this. I agree with this statement while suspecting I disagree with the context of it (which I think was also my problem with whatever other Kohn I've read...). I do think that becoming the sort of person who needs to seek out praise can definitely involve invisible costs! (This is my sister all over! Part of a whole complex of issues that was, and I imagine is, giving her massive invisible costs.)
I think I'd say that I wouldn't call a reaction to praise emotional regulation either, because (in the absence of something like your stepdaughter's anxiety -- not sure how that plays in) for me what the underlying issue is here is one's self-esteem. If one knows one's level and is secure in it, praise is a lovely thing but not essential to one's self-image and therefore not a stressor. If one isn't secure in that, praise becomes more like a judgment (and I see Kohn's point that this is more likely in general for parents and children because of the power dynamics) and then we start getting into stressors and invisible costs. For example, when I play violin for people who don't know a lot about music, I know they can't judge me. I love it when they say nice things (it's nice! I like knowing that they enjoyed it, or felt an emotional connection! I like knowing I've made people a little happier!) but it doesn't affect me too much whether they do or don't. If I played violin for people who did know a lot... well, honestly, I would be insecure enough that probably wouldn't at this point in my life, when I have gone so long without regular practice, ha. But for another example, I'm much more insecure about my writing than I am about my violin, and as a result I care way more about fic comments than I know is ideal, and definitely more than I care about musical comments :P :D (Though, I guess, writing in small fandoms makes one realize that the number of comments, at least, is sort of a meaningless number...) I don't know if this is what's going on with your stepdaughter, so maybe this isn't generalizable! I'm mostly generalizing from my own experience and my sister's. (Also note that in my sister's case, part of the problem seems to have been not that she got too much praise, but in fact the extreme scarcity of praise, though it does play into Kohn's point in the opposite sense, that she got "punished" a lot with criticism -- the quotes are because I imagine my parents didn't mean it as punishment, but it's definitely how she experienced it. But maybe I should read his book before talking more about it.)
That being said, I agree with Kohn, and have read many parenting articles about it, that as a parent (and therefore someone whose praise codes as judgement) one should be careful about praising one's child, but especially stuff that describes the child as a person (pretty, smart, good, etc.) -- growth vs fixed mindset -- the first time I heard someone I knew well (my sister) call her child "smart," I was dismayed and surprised!
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Date: 2022-09-03 06:04 pm (UTC)Part of the reason I'm holding back is that the more we talk past each other, the more I'm left thinking, "Okay, I need to clarify what I mean by X, and Y, and Z, and A, and B, and also C." And then I clarify two of them but only partially, and then you respond, and then the number of things where I'm like, "But that's not what I meant either!" just grows exponentially. Which means at this point I'm just completely daunted by the thought of building the whole framework that goes into how I think of these things. And I also know it's completely addictive to talk to you about these things :D, and if I start trying to build that framework, I'll never learn German or write this essay or read books like Cunegonde.
Actually I'm realizing through this discussion that I should probably do some more unpicking of it at this point, so thank you for talking through this stuff with me :)
So maybe I just accept that we're going to continue to talk past each other, but in a way that's still interesting and constructive, and so maybe I do something that's really hard for me, and that's not try to meticulously make sure that I've conveyed what I meant by every one of my points.
I feel like I've bounced off Alfie Kohn in the past but I might take a look at this.
Yeah, I'm kind of lukewarm about this book, in that
1) He says a lot of things I straight up disagree with.
2) He barely takes stress into account at all*, and I think it's too important to leave out. Like, sometimes I actually think he comes to the right conclusions for the wrong reasons.
3) Almost everything is qualified with "may" and "can", to the point where I kept going, "But I had the exact opposite reaction!"
ETA: Oh, and
4) The book is inflated through repetition of the same basic point over and over again, much like Dweck's Mindset. Explosive Child was nice and tight!
5) It spends 300 pages belaboring the idea of "this thing you're doing doesn't work" without doing much more than giving a nod in the direction of "an alternative that might actually work." According to the author, this is a major issue that many people have with this work! And which forced him to address it a little, all the while grumbling that he shouldn't have to. Explosive Child was nice because it's got a great how-to manual of how to do a thing that does work, namely collaborative problem-solving! Kohn should have spent 100 pages going, "don't do this" and 200 pages going "do this instead," instead of 275 pages going "don't do this" and 25 pages alluding to things that might work while strongly hinting that he shouldn't have to do the handholding of telling you anything constructive. So yeah, I can see why you bounced, if his other work is anything like this.
* Meaning that your entire paragraph about praise and self-esteem is talking past what he's saying, again because I lacked the time to write an essay.
And yet he made some interesting points, and some things rang very true, and I got some insights as a result of reading this book (in fact, kind of an emotional breakthrough that I wasn't expecting)...but what I had to do was pick those parts out of a mass of things that I was meh about. That makes it very hard to recommend this book. (Like to my boss and grandboss, who I think need to hear some of it, but the parts I consider important might not jump out at them.) As opposed to The Explosive Child, where I was like, "YES! Everybody read this!" (And I did rec it to my boss as an example of how to engage in collaborate problem-solving with underperforming employees, and he said he might pick it up someday.)
Oh, lol, I didn't tell you what I did with that book. I initially discovered it in a Little Free Library on one of my walks. Now, as you know, I only do digital books, so I left the hard copy there and promptly went home and bought it on Kindle.
But then, on my next walk in a different part of the neighborhood, I remembered that there's an elementary school with a Little Free Library nearby!
Reader, I relocated the book. :P Some teacher or parent of a child (or possibly older child, the school goes up to 8th grade) found this book, and I hope they're getting something out of it. :D
I mean, you are replying to a comment where I was like, "if it were my kid I'd hire a tutor!" so, uh, you're worrying about the wrong person thinking you might be overly controlling :P But also, like... it doesn't seem to me that you were trying to control it?
Yet again I fail to provide context! The missing piece here is that as the sole breadwinner, I was being asked to authorize her taking two classes and one of them being math, and to pay for tuition. I am still a bit scarred by paying tuition for her previous attempts at taking a class and watching it implode spectacularly...along with numerous other expenses that have been couched as, "This! This is the thing that will make me feel better and become independent!" and that have been money down the drain.
Which, I don't know exactly how this went down and what kind of tone was being used etc. but I could see it coming across as judgmental or not, depending on the wording and tone.
Thus, in context, my reaction of, "This doesn't seem like it's going to end well" meant "This doesn't seem like a good investment on my part," which meant, "I need to be convinced that this is a good idea before I agree to pay for it."
"if it were my kid I'd hire a tutor!"
And I might as well, but a) she's not a kid, b) she's not mine, c) I have stopped taking any initiative where she's concerned, and am limiting my efforts to trying to keep expenses reasonable. I want her to get better for her own sake and mine (I did not sign up for this*), but she has a history of terrible judgment, to the point where I often feel like a bank denying a loan on the grounds that the borrower has a bad credit history.
* We once talked about the between my wife's disability and your sister's, and the difference between how I react vs. how your sister's husband reacts, and I said one major difference has to be that I signed up for this and that he didn't. My attitude toward my stepdaughter is much more like your brother-in-law's, in that she was supposed to move out after a year to go to college, and now there's every sign I'm going to be supporting her for the rest of my life. The difference being that your sister and her husband at least had a relationship to begin with, whereas my stepdaughter and I have *none*.
ETA: Conspicuously not replying today to the parts that would take the longest. ;)
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Date: 2022-09-04 09:32 pm (UTC)Hee, yeah, reasonable! I would like to hear that framework... someday. Maybe when you come to CA someday (or I come to Boston -- which could conceivably happen as early as next year, but might also not... or we go abroad together... which could also conceivably happen someday...) you can talk my ear off in person and then I can ask you to clarify things :P (This is the kind of thing that, tangential to one of my parentheticals above, I find IS more efficiently done synchronously than via asynchronous messaging.)
So maybe I just accept that we're going to continue to talk past each other, but in a way that's still interesting and constructive, and so maybe I do something that's really hard for me, and that's not try to meticulously make sure that I've conveyed what I meant by every one of my points.
Yeah. I mean, if I'm ever doing something that pings you as bad for E in particular, I would like you to call it out so that I can think about it. I mean, since I know her and share half her genes, I will prioritize my observations over yours, but I do feel like whenever we talk about this stuff it is helpful!
* Meaning that your entire paragraph about praise and self-esteem is talking past what he's saying, again because I lacked the time to write an essay.
Oh, I'm definitely going to read this book, so no need for you to write the essay. I actually just read the first bit and really should not read the rest... uhh... until mid-September, all my reading circuits ought to be taken by other stuff right now, but wow, yeah, he's a) very readable b) I keep wanting to be all "yes BUT..." and "okay BUT..." like, I keep agreeing with specific things he says but I'm like "...BUT!" c) I haven't read what he says about praise yet but even from the bit I've read i can see that I was talking past his points.
The missing piece here is that as the sole breadwinner, I was being asked to authorize her taking two classes and one of them being math, and to pay for tuition. I am still a bit scarred by paying tuition for her previous attempts at taking a class and watching it implode spectacularly...along with numerous other expenses that have been couched as, "This! This is the thing that will make me feel better and become independent!" and that have been money down the drain.
"I need to be convinced that this is a good idea before I agree to pay for it."
Ah! Yes, that changes the entire tone of the discussion! Um. This sounds perfectly logical to me?
But also I can see how this would become extremely frustrating.
(Also, I am confused as to how classes will help when she is not capable of living in an apartment on her own? It seems like there are a LOT of steps between "take an online class" and "be more independent" and some of them (unless there's a larger-scale plan of which I'm unaware) are on the order of "...and then, a miracle occurs." It is of course great to take those steps. Just... I wonder.)
But... yeah... with the additional context, if it were me putting up the money for another unrelated person in this kind of situation, I would want some ideally quantitative evidence that said person had set themself up to succeed. (The same way that in a work situation I might have to make a case to my project manager that if I go off and spend some time/money on a thing I want to do, that it would actually be effective. At work I tend to have some political capital to work with as well, because my bosses generally consider me to do good work and to have good judgment -- but if it were a manager I hadn't worked with before, or worse one for whom I hadn't done good work in the past, it would make perfect sense that it would take rather more evidence and a much more solid plan, and also might involve some micro-managing of the early steps.)
I think... my suggestion to them to show this to me would be to have them take the pre-algebra diagnostics on AoPS. (Appropriate ones would probably be the Prealgebra I pre-test and/or the Prealgebra I post-test (Fundamentals section only, I would NOT recommend she do the Problem Solving part, and depending on her College Algebra syllabus, possibly only parts of the Fundamentals section), depending on level -- but for someone with a math phobia, I might start with the former first. I would skip Prealgebra 2 entirely which I think is for stronger learners.) If they didn't know the stuff on the pre-test I would 100% NOT green-light spending money on a college algebra class (which is likely to be both frustrating and ineffective), I'd spend $15 to set them up with Beast Academy for a month and have further months dependent on them actually using it, including doing problem sets, and seeing progress on the chapter tests. (Beast Academy will send the person-who-set-it-up email about this! It's so great.)
(If pre-test is OK but post-test is not, it's a little more tricky because I'm again not sure I recommend AoPS for a weaker math student with a math phobia. But for an adult... who passes the pre-test... and who would... presumably... have the adult skills to be able to communicate with the teachers/TA if she had problems... it might be okay?...)
But a) like I said, I am, I guess, obviously not the right person to ask about being controlling, b) I am super interested in math pedagogy in particular, and c) my current math pedagogy interests are 12 and 7 (and related ages, don't think I'm not also advising math pedagogy for my kids' classmates, lol) so I'm used to using a much heavier hand than someone might be comfortable doing with an adult. I also would 100% understand if you don't want to put that much energy into it; for anyone else who isn't super interested like me I imagine it would be exhausting and take away from learning German and such ;) (And also... I suppose that as an adult, it's really on her to figure out how to present and plan this, and give you updates rather than you being the one to micromanage her. except that she probably has neither the skills nor the knowledge to do so. -- which, I mean, that's not meant to be shade on her -- I assume that because it's not really taught in school and kids are expected to learn it by osmosis. Well, maybe they teach it in Sweden :PP :) )
(haha OMG this is slightly tangential but belongs in the same general area of my brain: I JUST heard E say to her little brother (about some sort of problem he's having in Minecraft), "Do you think you can find a solution to that?" which, lol, maybe we're doing something right)
no subject
Date: 2022-09-04 10:18 pm (UTC)I've been resisting the urge to go, "Maybe we should talk on the phone!" with an internal debate on whether I will *actually* be able to convey my framework more effectively synchronously, or whether that's just my fantasy, while in reality at the end of four hours I will be tired and hungry and have to go to the bathroom and be no closer to having achieved my goal. ;) (As noted, I'm not particularly organized about my thoughts when talking spontaneously.)
Since you think it will be more efficient, we should try this some day!
Maybe when you come to CA someday (or I come to Boston -- which could conceivably happen as early as next year, but might also not... or we go abroad together... which could also conceivably happen someday...)
Waaaahhh, I want all of these things!
wow, yeah, he's a) very readable
This.
b) I keep wanting to be all "yes BUT..." and "okay BUT..." like, I keep agreeing with specific things he says but I'm like "...BUT!"
THIS. THIS THIS THIS!!
c) I haven't read what he says about praise yet but even from the bit I've read i can see that I was talking past his points.
Yeah, mostly because I added the word "stressor" to my summary of what he said, because, as I said, you have to read between the lines and supply the role of stress yourself. (Btw, I think he's right that stress is only part of the picture, but I take issue with omitting any discussion of stress at all.)
Yeah. I mean, if I'm ever doing something that pings you as bad for E in particular,
I have been avoiding doing this, because I know how it goes when Childless Person 'splains to Parent how to parent. :P And you *are* the one who knows her! I am trying to keep my extremely partial and fragmented picture in mind every time I go, "...BUT!"
I would like you to call it out so that I can think about it. I mean, since I know her and share half her genes, I will prioritize my observations over yours
And rightly so (see above)! But since you've asked, I will at some point give you my opinions on the two points that come to mind as having pinged me: 1) telling her what her ranking is in math competitions, 2) "I did talk to her about how it's age appropriate to hear it's fine to be wrong when you're a kid, but as an adult there's definitely a premium to be able to do things correctly."
I know I never responded to your response to my "!!" on point 2, but also I was thinking about our conversation yesterday when I was supposed to be falling asleep last night, so I am going to make myself STOP HERE. STOP, SELF.
:P
I suppose that as an adult, it's really on her to figure out how to present and plan this, and give you updates rather than you being the one to micromanage her. except that she probably has neither the skills nor the knowledge to do so.
Right, like, she doesn't, but it's also not my job, since the last time I tried micromanaging her (into a downtown apartment, which was supposed to be good for her agoraphobia), the time and money invested backfired. I'm done. I'm disengaging.
It seems like there are a LOT of steps between "take an online class" and "be more independent" and some of them (unless there's a larger-scale plan of which I'm unaware) are on the order of "...and then, a miracle occurs."
You should have seen one of the proposals, which was:
1. "Go into debt to buy a piano."
2. "I get a hobby."
3.
and then, a miracle occurs"My depression is cured."4. ...
5. "Profit!"
I did not go into debt, eventually bought the piano(-sized keyboard), was highly skeptical...and, guess what's still gathering dust in the dining room, eight years later, because no one will either use it or agree to get rid of it? At least with the new place I'm insisting it go in her bedroom and not take up space in the common area.
Thank you for your suggestions. I might find a way of seeing if I can get some use out of suggesting that. The problem is that two of her many phobias include 1) practice tests with no consequences, 2) me, so me requiring she take a diagnostic test before she sign up for a class, as much sense as that makes in a logical world, might involve months of therapy to recover from.
We'll see. Btw, I think all your suggestions are amazingly good ones pedagogically, it's just...I have to deal with someone whose anxiety is at the level of "being afraid to leave the bedroom to go to the kitchen or bathroom." When I say "paralyzing," that is not much of an exaggeration.
Well, maybe they teach it in Sweden :PP
LOL! I know, right?
"Do you think you can find a solution to that?" which, lol, maybe we're doing something right)
Hee! Good for her! And yes, you're doing many things right that I can't even conceive of most parents doing! I've been kind of surprised, honestly; I didn't know anyone was doing all that!
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Date: 2022-09-05 04:27 pm (UTC)HAHA, yeah, I'm... not that excited about that :) Because phone. But I think I could be convinced to get on board with a trip that involves lots of time spent on a train or whatever that could be used to talk about pedagogy :) (I also think that down-time conversation spread out over days is more likely to get us somewhere productive than one very long conversation.) Just... it might be when my kids are old enough that the discussion is irrelevant to them, lol.
But since you've asked, I will at some point give you my opinions on the two points that come to mind as having pinged me: 1) telling her what her ranking is in math competitions, 2) "I did talk to her about how it's age appropriate to hear it's fine to be wrong when you're a kid, but as an adult there's definitely a premium to be able to do things correctly."
Very fair! A little more context:
1) Honestly, I agree. In a vacuum I probably wouldn't tell her. But at some point it usually does come out, and I'd rather it be me that tells her because I won't make a big deal out of it and other people will. I did actually get away with not telling her she'd got first ranking in Chapter Mathcounts last year for months (I told her she got to go to state and do harder problems), which her teacher/coach was appalled by my doing when she finally found out :) And then I did have to tell her, because if I didn't the coach was going to do it. But at least I can usually delay it until it's something her brain doesn't connect up with the problems she solved ages ago, and treat it as matter-of-fact. (I do think though that there's something to getting used to the idea of rankings as a fact about life, as she'll be dealing with that in the future -- like, if she ranks second in a math contest it's just a consequence of rank-ordering of everyone who took it, and someone has to be second! -- and I actually think the more important thing is that I don't treat being second as any different from being ninety-second, as long as she feels she's progressing. Which I try to do -- and I do praise her, but for things like "oh hey, you kept working on that problem even when you weren't sure you knew how to do it, and then you realized you did know!" and never for how she may have arbitrarily ranked.)
2) I mean, I stand by what I said, but if you are wanting to point out that what I said is not AT ALL relevant for E herself and may be detrimental if she takes it to heart, you are absolutely correct! This was in reponse to her noticing that on learning platforms she used to (say) get infinite tries to get a problem right, and now it's more like two tries. But it's a good point that I was trying to describe why a learning platform might generally start doing this (especially since she will almost certainly go to a less progressive high school than the school she attends now, and therefore be subject to traditional tests and so on, and she will need to be able to deal with that), rather than trying to answer why it might be relevant for her personally (it's not. at all.), and given my usual scatterdash communication skills, it is very likely I did not make that distinction clear to her. soooo I should really make sure this is clear!
You should have seen one of the proposals, which was:
1. "Go into debt to buy a piano."
2. "I get a hobby."
3. and then, a miracle occurs "My depression is cured."
4. ...
5. "Profit!"
UM. RIGHT.
it's just...I have to deal with someone whose anxiety is at the level of "being afraid to leave the bedroom to go to the kitchen or bathroom." When I say "paralyzing," that is not much of an exaggeration.
...wow. Um. Seems like this would be the thing to work on? (I'm sure she's working on it.) Although with that level of anxiety, being able to take two online classes does seem like a reasonable step up. (But I still think that taking college algebra, knowing that she is math-phobic, could really backfire.) But it doesn't seem like that will actually address the most important part of the problem...
The problem is that two of her many phobias include 1) practice tests with no consequences, 2) me
Mm. I can see why you might be a phobia, but wow, this is... unfortunate for her (and you, by extension), to say the least. (I got nothing on practice tests with no consequences. That's weird.)
And yes, you're doing many things right that I can't even conceive of most parents doing! I've been kind of surprised, honestly; I didn't know anyone was doing all that!
<3 I honestly suspect that my parents doing a lot of things I considered bad parenting mostly worked out great for E, as I had a very clear idea in my head of what I didn't want my parenting to look like, and a less clear but still reasonably thought out idea of what would have worked better for me, and E being like me worked to my advantage there. (And I read a lot of books and articles -- which is why sometimes you are like "growth mindset!" and I'm all "yup, got it!") I mean, I'm doing a lot of things wrong too that I don't talk about. (The worst thing is that I realized years after the fact that there's something about my matter-of-fact/intense approach to certain things that codes to E like I'm yelling at her (I don't think it generally codes like this for other kids -- A laughs at me) -- but because her stress affect is very flat, I didn't understand this for an extremely long time, and now I feel really bad that she basically thought I was yelling at her a lot when she was little. (Okay, this was to a certain extent a casualty of my upbringing -- I DID get yelled at and screamed at, so I know what it's like and I knew I wasn't doing it, so it didn't even occur to me that she might have a response to something that wasn't that.) She's old enough now (and has a little brother to show her) that she can intellectually understand that's not what I'm trying to do, and she can tell me to cut it out if it's bothering her now, and of course I'm working on it too (not always successfully, but trying) but :( )
no subject
Date: 2022-09-25 03:37 pm (UTC)Fair!
2) I mean, I stand by what I said, but if you are wanting to point out that what I said is not AT ALL relevant for E herself and may be detrimental if she takes it to heart
Exactly; after all, the question was "bad for E in particular" and not "highly inaccurate." ;)
So, first, thank you for the additional context. That definitely helps. And you may be entirely right that that's what the designers of the platform were thinking.
If so, I still disagree strongly with them. I would say (and, if it were me, explain to E), that the difference isn't "child vs. adult" but "learning vs. mastery." Adults have mastered more skills than children, but the learning process is exactly the same at any age: it involves making a ton of mistakes. And it's necessary to feel safe making mistakes, and to be able to emotionally regulate around things not working on the first or even tenth try, or you won't get nearly as far in life (and you'll be much more miserable while doing so).
I would talk to E about this difference. I would point out that she has already mastered a bunch of skills, and that the value of mastering skills, which she already knows, is that it feels good, it allows you to master new skills (can't do algebra if you're still unable to add and subtract!), it allows you to achieve whatever the goal of that skill is to achieve (it will take longer to leave the house if you need thirty tries to tie your shoes every time), and it allows you to be entrusted with responsibilities involving those skills. Which will be lucrative as an adult who has mastered a lot *more* skills than a child, but is still useful even as a kid.
And I would tell her that we need to treat people very very differently depending on whether they've mastered a skill or are still learning the skill. That pharmacist calculating dosages from your example in a previous conversation wasn't--I hope!--someone still learning the skill. I would hope that job would be given to someone who had mastered it (which is what I meant above by mastery allowing you to be entrusted with responsibilities). When you yourself submit finished projects to clients, you're a highly paid analyst because you've *already* mastered the skills you need to submit good work, and you're entrusted with responsibilities that depend on that mastery. You're not asking the clients to evaluate your work as part of teaching you how to do the thing.
But it took me 30 tries to figure out how to set up my wifi extender a couple weeks ago, because I was still learning. I am *not* getting paid for my mastery of this skill.
A student, similarly, is still learning. I would spend most of my time (as you seem to) talking to E about the importance of mistakes in the learning process, saying that mistakes are like when your Python code prints out an error message. You're not going to get very far in learning without error messages, and so instead of fearing or hating mistakes, you can hope for them just like you do with error messages, and make use of them the same way.
One thing Alfie whats-his-name says that I went "YES!" at, because I'd independently come up with that as part of my dreams of reforming education, is that the only two "grades", if there must be grades, should be "A" and "incomplete." And I would say that's because one means mastery and one means still learning. Forcing kids to stop halfway through the learning process and tell them they got a "C" and they have to move on makes no damn sense. (It make make sense to move on and return to it later. But that's what "incomplete" means.)
And likewise, 2 tries to get the right answer seems absurdly low to me. Especially if we're talking about going one problem at a time to identify your mistakes, learn from them, and apply them to getting later problems right, and if there are a finite number of problems. (One problem at a time, btw, was the correct answer, for the exact reasons you described. :P E just needs help emotionally regulating here.)
Someone like certain of E's classmates needs emphasis on valuing mastery more highly, so they don't just keep not caring about getting wrong answers indefinitely. (As you know, I would not start with punishments and rewards; I would start by emphasizing the intrinsic consequences of mastery I listed above and try *really hard* to get the child to understand and value those intrinisic consequences.)
Someone like E needs emphasis on emotionally regulating through the learning process. And part of that, speaking as someone who struggled with that part and not with the valuing mastery part, is realizing that this learning process, with lots of mistakes, continues forever, and that it's part of the lives of those people above you, called adults, who've mastered many more skills and thus may seem like they always know what they're doing (and who probably live in a culture that's taught them to have difficulty admitting to their mistakes).
especially since she will almost certainly go to a less progressive high school than the school she attends now, and therefore be subject to traditional tests and so on, and she will need to be able to deal with that)
Ugh. I was hoping she'd be able to stay in progressive schools or home school or something. Yeah, in that case, if it were me, I'd be emphasizing the ways in which traditional schools are the product of some uninformed beliefs and traditions that go back to at least the Middle Ages, and that we've learned some things about cognitive science in recent decades, and that life will get better again as an adult, especially if she knows what to look for and how to end up in a healthier environment. (There are plenty of jobs and bosses that go back to the Middle Ages. Knowing how to identify them and being able to externalize as "doesn't know any better" and "there are better options out there" is worlds better than buying into the system.)
And I read a lot of books and articles -- which is why sometimes you are like "growth mindset!" and I'm all "yup, got it!"
Lol! That definitely makes these conversations easier and better, that we have at least some part of our language in common. :)
I mean, I'm doing a lot of things wrong too that I don't talk about.
Yeah, this is what I mean about learning vs. mastery, and learning being something that continues as an adult! And for something like parenting, it's non-deterministic, unlike calculating dosages, so you never fully master it, it's always a learning process. And the emotional regulation skills needed for non-deterministic, especially people-oriented, learning are the same as but even harder than for deterministic skills, which is why E needs to keep developing those skills around her deterministic learning, because wow is she going to need them for her non-deterministic learning!
of course I'm working on it too (not always successfully, but trying) but :( )
And this is why you need more than 2 tries, and it's good that real life gives you that. ;)
(And yeah, patients die, because medicine is non-determnistic and thus always a learning process*, and sometimes life *doesn't* give you more than 1 or 2 tries. Bodies are not wifi extenders, alas.)
* Although many professionals have confused their mastery of a bunch of individual skills with mastery of medicine, and society's tendency to send "as an adult there's definitely a premium to be able to do things correctly" messages does not help with this.
there's something about my matter-of-fact/intense approach to certain things that codes to E like I'm yelling at her
AAAHHH, my wife has something very like this! Anything that isn't super positive (and many things that are) codes to her as like I'm yelling at her. So any time I'm even mildly confused or disappointed or concentrating on something else or anything that comes out with even slight negative tones in my voice codes as "You're doing it wrong!"
And, I mean, I *know* I have tone of voice struggles, but I can use the exact same tone of voice at work to go, "Is there a reason the username was changed?" as I use at home to go "Is there a reason the chair is on the porch?", and I can get a totally routine "No, that was an accident, please put it back/Yes, it's because of X" answer at work, while at home I get a huge "OH NO she's mad because the chair is on the porch!!" reaction, and I'm like, "I just want to know if I should put it back or leave it!"
It's because she grew up in an environment where people wouldn't tell you what they were thinking and there were huge consequences for not figuring out if they were mad at you, so she learned to read minds and that it was safer to assume the worst. Whereas I grew up in a home where I couldn't *imagine* not knowing what my mother was thinking; there was a constant running commentary on her state of mind from minute to minute! (My wife's face when I said this was like my mother was from Mars.)
I actually speculated to my wife recently that maybe one of the reasons I was so delayed in learning to read body language and facial expressions was because I never needed to! It wouldn't have added anything. Not until I met her did I really feel like there was this whole second language that I needed to know, and that it might contradict the words that were coming out of her mouth. And that was when I learned to read faces. (Or at least one face; it remains to be seen if it translates, since I don't interact with anyone else face-to-face.)
I suspect E has one thing that's similar to my wife: not the upbringing, but the neuroendocrinology. The fact that her amygdala is pumping out glucocorticoids at a truly prodigious rate, and that this causes her to put an exaggeratedly fearful interpretation on neutral or slightly negative stimuli. Some people are simply born with higher levels of anxiety, and E seems to be one of them*. (My stepdaughter is an example of what we call "marinating in glucocorticoids": her amygdala will cause her to put a negative spin on pretty much any stimulus she encounters, hence the near-paralysis.)
* It's often comorbid with autism. After meeting my stepdaughter, I realized that the word for what one of my autistic brothers has is agoraphobia.
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Date: 2022-09-09 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-09 05:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-27 11:17 pm (UTC)Question: Does this happen one problem at a time, "submit a problem, get an answer explanation, try another problem," or is this "do a bunch of problems, submit them all for evaluation at the same time"?
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Date: 2022-09-02 04:42 am (UTC)But she would prefer submitting them all at once, I'm pretty sure. And she'd also prefer getting the answer back a week later :P